Publications
Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor? Identifying the Distributive Preferences of Village Politicians in India (with Neelanjan Sircar)
April 2024 Electoral Studies
We investigate the distributive preferences of elected leaders in local democracies, who are tasked with “everyday assistance” and personally know their constituents. In this setting, economic distribution is driven more by leader preferences and less by efficiency concerns, as in the lower information setting typically described in the literature. In local democracy, we argue voters can explicitly select leaders who prefer to distribute to a broad group of supporters, who further conform to norms of targeting the most needy among supporters. In this article, we develop a novel behavioral measure that isolates leaders’ distributive preferences from direct electoral benefit, which we implement in villages across the Indian state of Rajasthan. We find elected leaders prefer to distribute 94% more to supporters and 17% more to supporters one standard deviation below the mean village wealth. This suggests local elections are consistent with significant distribution to the poor, albeit with political biases.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor?”
Rethinking India and the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World
(With Adam Auerbach, Jennifer Bussell, Francesca Jensenius, Gareth Nellis, Neelanjan Sircar, Pavithra Suryanarayan, Tariq Thachil, Milan Vaishnav, Rahul Verma and Adam Ziegfeld)
March 2021, Perspectives on Politics
In the study of electoral politics and political behavior, India is often considered to be an exemplar of the centrality of contingency in distributive politics, the role of ethnicity in shaping political behavior, and the organizational weakness of political parties. Whereas these axioms do have some basis, the massive changes in political practices, the vast variation in political patterns, and the burgeoning literature on subnational dynamics in India mean that such generalizations are no longer tenable. The purpose of this article is to consider new and emerging research on India that compels us to rethink the contention that India neatly fits the prevailing wisdom in the comparative politics literature. Our objective is to elucidate how these more nuanced insights about Indian politics can improve our understanding of electoral behavior both across and within other countries, allowing us to question core assumptions in theories of comparative politics.
The Discerning Voter: Partisan Alignment and Local Distribution Under Multi-Level Governance
February 2020, Party Politics
What shapes voters’ expectations of receiving private anti-poverty benefits and local public goods in decentralized systems where discretion over the allocation of different types of government resources is held at different tiers of government? Existing models of instrumental voting in patronage-based democracies suggests that voters’ expectations are shaped by shared ethnic or partisan identities with party leaders or candidates or a record of past distribution. This work, however, does not consider the nuanced calculations that voters make in systems where different types of benefits are controlled by different tiers of government. In this article, I show that voters in rural India weigh the impact of co-partisan ties with the local leader on distribution differently where discretion over targeting varies between the local and state levels of government. I test my argument with a unique vignette survey experiment in which I randomize the partisan affiliation of real village council politicians, whom voters identify as a prominent Congress/BJP leader in their locality. Consistent with the argument, voters are more likely to anticipate private benefits when the sarpanch is a co-partisan; the impact of co-partisanship on access to state funds for local public goods is conditioned on whether the sarpanch belongs to the ruling party at the state level.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “How Savvy is the Rural Indian Voter?”
Do Local Leaders Know Their Voters? A Test of Guessability in India
November 2019, Electoral Studies
Prominent theories of clientelism—the exchange of benefits for political support—depend on the assumption that brokers possess detailed information on voters’ political preferences prior to targeting. This article provides the first direct test of this assumption. It develops a unique survey measure, guessability, which gauges the ability of local brokers to correctly identify the partisan preferences of voters in their locality. It then develops a way to estimate brokers’ added informational value by comparing brokers’ performance against low-information benchmarks that capture guessability rates that can feasibly be achieved by outsiders. Original data from a cross-referenced survey of voters and elected village leaders across 96 village councils in Rajasthan, India indicate that while an important category of brokers out-perform low-information benchmarks overall or with respect to non-co-partisans. This has important implications for the feasibility of core and swing targeting strategies in India and beyond.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “Can Benefits be Tied to the Vote?”
Works in Progress
Does Increasing Competition Increase Pro-Poor Responsiveness? Distributive Preferences of Partisan Brokers in Mexico (With Tesalia Rizzo, UC Merced). Do local partisan brokers change their distributive preferences when faced with competition from non-partisan programmatic actors? This paper measures local partisan intermediaries’ distributive preferences in 112 villages embedded in a larger field experiment conducted in Mexico that introduced non-partisan facilitators trained to inform and assist citizens in formally requesting government resources, a task that usually falls to a partisan intermediary. Using a conjoint experiment, we find that brokers in villages with a facilitator are 22% more likely to prefer to target the poorest category of voters than those in the control group. We interpret this as a result of increased competition for clients specifically in a context where the alternative provider of assistance is programmatic. This has important implications for understanding the potential of low-cost programmatic interventions to increase responsiveness to the poor by clientelistic actors. Manuscript available upon request.
Does Competition Matter? Understanding the drivers of local competition and its effects in village council elections in Rajasthan. Village council Presidents play an important role in implementing government programs and responding to citizens requests; however, little is know about the nature of political competition in across hundreds of thousands local elections in India. In this article, I provide the first examination of competition across the 11,000 village councils of Rajasthan and the correlates of competition using scraped data on electoral competition and the characteristics of the leading candidates in these elections. I combine this with qualitative case studies of low and high competition village councils and qualitative interviews with runners up and elected sarpanches.
Are Local Politicians and Bureaucrats on the Same Page? Politician-Bureaucrat Cooperation in Rural India (with Manasi Rao, Yale University). India’s 73rd amendment decentralized substantial powers over the implementation of national policies to local governments; however, carrying out constituents’ demands often requires cooperation from un-elected bureaucrats. This project examines the relationship between local representatives in rural India (village council presidents) and unelected local bureaucrats (gram panchayat secretaries) to understand the nature of this relationship. Along with observational survey data examining the relationship between local bureaucrats and village council presidents, we include conjoint experiments that measure the targeting and policy preferences of village council presidents and local bureaucrats. We hypothesize that the ability of village council presidents to deliver for their constituents will be reduced where preferences are misaligned. This project provides insights on democratic decentralization and the role that un-elected local actors play in mediating democratic responsiveness. Data collection is currently in progress. Pre-Analysis Plan.
Understanding the Effects of Repeat Exposure to Problematic Social Media Content on Social Attitudes. The illusory truth effect suggests that repeated exposure to misinformation increases the chance that individuals believe false claims. This project broadens the scope of this prediction by examining the impact of repeated exposure to different types of misinformation (low salience, political misinformation, misinformation that targets ethnic or political outgroups), hate speech , and calls to violence language in the US, India, and Brazil to understand the impacts of repeat exposure (as compared to one-time exposure) to problematic content on beliefs and attitudes toward political and ethnic out-groups.
Teaching Local Government Civics in College and non-College Settings. Civic knowledge in the US is known to be low particularly in the context of local government. This project develops a civics education program in a college setting (in collaboration with students at LMU) and in the context of teaching civics to adults. The pilot proof of concept project is expected to launch in LA and NYC in summer 2025.
Future Research
The Moral Economy of the Median Voter: Informal Social Norms and Political Selection in Village Council Elections in India. Hundreds ofd thousands of local elections take place across rural India, however, little is understood about what voters prioritize when it comes to selecting their leaders and how the unique features of village democracy changes the nature of elections. This project has several goals. First, I characterize the high level of information that voters have about local candidates, and dense social ties between voters and between voters and leaders that characterize village council elections. This provides a striking contrast to local politics in developed countries where information is low. Second, using conjoint analysis, I show the extent to which local social norms shape election outcomes — by measuring voters’ social preferences (i.e., targeting preferences toward the extreme poor) and candidate preferences (i.e., what traits they prioritize including reputations for responsiveness) across contexts. Third, I use a survey of winners and runners up to understand if candidates differ at different levels of competition when it comes to reputations for responsiveness toward the extreme poor. I integrate these results with focus groups on who voters make their decisions in these elections. Building on earlier experimental work on strategic voting in these elections, this will result in the first systematic investigation of political behavior in gram panchayat elections in India while making important contributions to the understanding of the role of local social norms on political selection in local elections in India. This survey project is designed and at the fund raising stage. Pre-Analysis Plan/Proposal.
Misinformation in Local Elections in the United States: Consequences and Remedies. Misinformation is widespread in political campaigns and elections. While concerns about the effects of misinformation on representation and accountability have focused on national political targets (e.g., Biden, Trump), little is known about the effects of misinformation on local elections where voters have little knowledge of many of the candidates. This project will evaluate the effects of misinformation of various types targeting local and national politicians on perceptions of political candidates, interest in local politics, and vote intentions. Case study analysis beginning in California in Summer 2025.
Media Writing
“Competition in Rajasthan Local Elections and Its Consequences” (Coming Soon)
“How Investing in Civic Education Bolsters Democracy” (Coming Soon)
“Sarpanches and Supporters: Everyday Responsiveness in Rural India. India in Transition, 30 September 2024.
“How Savvy is the Rural Indian Voter?” Hindu Business Line, 31 January 2018.
“Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor?” Hindu Business Line, 14 December 2015.
“Can Benefits be Tied to the Vote?” Hindu Business Line, 14 January 2014.